lies to send home: even their dust is gold. Even gnawed bones manifest

new meat. Lazy bones, you were called in China

Acceptable meat, you are now in America. Call it trans

action, to leverage a knife against its rust, a grape against its wine.

To measure a man against the price of sending back his skull.

I don’t like the look of them, those slant-eyes, that skulk

about – it’s about – it’s about jobs, it’s about fairness, it’s about white

women – protecting – being a man. They can’t even hold their wine

for God’s sake, for the sake of God, our God, ever-living, ever-manifest–

it’s a matter of values, beef-eaters or rice-eaters, our God or trans

send them back – send them back – back to Godlessness, back to China –

In California, I ride the train along a crease in your palm, trans

fixed: nothing can be. Light through the window skull

-capping me, tightening, wearing me white.

Kristin Chang lives in NY. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the Shade Journal, Teen Vogue, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Nightblock, The Shallow Ends, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2017 and is currently on staff at Winter Tangerine.